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Web Development: A Crazy World

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Re: Web Development: A Crazy World

#91

Post by nahname »

Learn technologies that are popular, such as jQuery. The community will help make this easy. You will use jQuery on almost every project, so this will be time well spent.

Master components that are core, such as JavaScript. You will use JavaScript on every project. A true understanding will be essential to everything you choose to do with it. It amazes me how many developers do web development without ever trying to learn how to write effective JavaScript.

Lastly, do something just for fun. Programming is fun, enjoy it once in a while. Try a new language you will probably never use. Use a new framework or library. Look into something old. It is amazing how many old things are new again.

Do all this and the web won't be such a scary place.

Re: Web Development: A Crazy World

#92

Post by bpatrianakos »

dvanduzer wrote: post #64
benihana wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second sentence really tells all. " Just learned Backbone.js and only found out it’s already out of fashion ." This is why critical thinking and a sight of the big picture is so important. Who cares if something is fashionable? Does Backbone help you solve your problems? Yes? then use it. No? Don't use it.

There can be significant risk in choosing unfashionable tools if upstream maintenance dies off and you aren't equipped to maintain them yourself.

No, this isn't correct. Fashionability has nothing to do with it. PHP is not fashionable - in fact I'd argue that right now it might be the most despised language around - but upstream development isn't slowing down at all but in fact speeding up and it's being improved at a very rapid pace as of late.

I think choosing fashionable tools because you think upstream maintenance will continue into the future is actually misguided. In my experience the old, boring tools are what have staying power. The new fashion comes out, gets lot of attention, then the next big thing steals its thunder and you start seeing your fashionable tool's upstream updates go from a stream to a trickle to droplets here and there and finally you start to wonder if the project is dead.

Maybe you meant something different but just by going off what you said I'd say you're wrong. There's a difference between something popular with staying power and the latest fashion. I think the JavaScript world, node.js in particular, is in a period where for all its new hotness we'll start to see a lot of these popular modules just die. I think node may soon become a good example of why fashionable tools are not to be relied upon. That isn't to say that node itself is going anywhere but rather that its in a transition period from new hotness to something more stable and the NPM packages are what we'll see start dropping like flies before we can be sure what we can count on later.

Re: Web Development: A Crazy World

#93

Post by nlh »

sramsay wrote: post #51
benihana wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second sentence really tells all. " Just learned Backbone.js and only found out it’s already out of fashion ." This is why critical thinking and a sight of the big picture is so important. Who cares if something is fashionable? Does Backbone help you solve your problems? Yes? then use it. No? Don't use it.

"Does Backbone help you solve your problems?" This really bears repeating over and over again, and I think it's a corollary of "start by writing the dumbest thing that can possibly work." If you start with dumb, simple things, the problems become more obvious. Dumb simple things tend to shake out the parts that are tedious to build, or non-conformant, or confusing to read, or hard to maintain. It may be that Backbone…

I agree 1000% - very good point. The best tools (for you) are the ones that solve the problems that bug you the most and feel the most "right". It's a personal thing.

For example: In my case, I used to write a lot of plain HTML. I found it got annoying to type brackets and keep track of all the closing tags. So I tried ZenCoding, and it helped, but only on creation, not on editing. I finally settled on haml, because to me (not everyone), it solves the exact problem that I found troublesome and gave me the results that I like. No closing tags, cleaner markup. Others may disagree, but that doesn't matter - I like it for my purposes, and that's all it takes.

So to your point - learn the underlying tech, find your personal pain points, and use the tools that best solve them for you.

Re: Web Development: A Crazy World

#94

Post by raverbashing »

marknutter wrote: post #77
raverbashing wrote: post #26

Yes, this The amount of 'meetoo.js' is amazing(ly bad) Because of course everybody has to have "MVC responsive html5 cascading containers with chocolate covering" Not to mention most of these are underdocumented, bug-ridden, too specific, etc Need a js library? JQuery. period (and don't get me started with mootools, I need to ship, not swim around their docs figuring out how to do what in jquery is easy ) And focus o…

> Need a js library? JQuery. period Sure, if you love writing the same boiler plate code over and over again to make sure your dom is updated and your data is synced. JS frameworks are solving a problem, whether or not people like that there are so many out there. We are in the early days, and of course there's going to be a lot of competition. A few will rise to the top and become standards. You know, there were qui…

What I mean is "don't use a jQuery competitor (or jQuery 'sized' tool) in place of jQuery"

Sure, if you need something else/more use it, still I've been burned by those "wonderful js frameworks" and I'll make sure to not use them unless needed and thoroughly evaluated.

Re: Web Development: A Crazy World

#95

Post by metaperl »

lucian1900 wrote: post #74
conradfr wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which version of Python ? Django or Flask ? Django ORM or SQLAlchemy ?

There are only two practical choices right now, both for Python 2: 1) Django 2) Flask + SQLAlchemy Not that much choice, is there?

I like web2py's DAL

Re: Web Development: A Crazy World

#96

Post by artursapek »

johnmw wrote: post #88
artursapek wrote: post #75

1. Go to Home Depot. 2. Pick the tools you like. Get a good hammer, saw, adjustable square. 3. Leave Home Depot and go get good with them. 4. If something breaks or doesn't perform a task you need, go back to Home Depot to supplement your toolbox.

What if your job is to build model aircraft? (Kidding, its a nice analogy but I think its also good to do some research on the tools you might need first or you might waste a lot of time. I once wasted a month of development time because I picked the wrong toolbox for the job).

Sure. But the point of this thread is, don't run over to Home Depot as soon as the shiny new hammers arrive.

Re: Web Development: A Crazy World

#97

Post by artursapek »

jzwinck wrote: post #82
artursapek wrote: post #75

1. Go to Home Depot. 2. Pick the tools you like. Get a good hammer, saw, adjustable square. 3. Leave Home Depot and go get good with them. 4. If something breaks or doesn't perform a task you need, go back to Home Depot to supplement your toolbox.

You forgot the laser-guided dado cutter, and the telescoping illuminated wet-dry vac with AM/FM radio.

Who can spend time in the shop without a nice ball game on the AM radio!

Re: Web Development: A Crazy World

#98

Post by marknutter »

raverbashing wrote: post #94
marknutter wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Need a js library? JQuery. period Sure, if you love writing the same boiler plate code over and over again to make sure your dom is updated and your data is synced. JS frameworks are solving a problem, whether or not people like that there are so many out there. We are in the early days, and of course there's going to be a lot of competition. A few will rise to the top and become standards. You know, there were qui…

What I mean is "don't use a jQuery competitor (or jQuery 'sized' tool) in place of jQuery" Sure, if you need something else/more use it, still I've been burned by those "wonderful js frameworks" and I'll make sure to not use them unless needed and thoroughly evaluated.

Well, at some point, there will emerge the "jquery of js frameworks."

Re: Web Development: A Crazy World

#100

Post by bpatrianakos »

I think its so great that we have so many new toys and such innovation going on in the world of the web. I remember when I was first starting out as a developer (when I was 10, it was 1996, I wasn't very good) all we had was HTML and CGI scripting. CSS was the new hotness that no one understood and PHP was just learning to crawl. Those two technologies were all there was and I don't remember other developers ever going nuts like an adoloscent girl at a Beatles concert over any of the stuff that was coming out then. It really is nuts how we push all this latest and greatest stuff only to abandon it next week. I remember just about a year or two ago the HN community was in absolute love (like 'The Notebook' style, forever and ever, everlasting love) with Rails - even more so than now. There were endless debates over its merits and its pitfalls and I watched as the people who took those debates the most personally agonized over every small bit of the development process while those who didn't really care as much just built stuff.

It really is great that these new toys are coming out but what I see as the real problem is that we lose sight over one particular piece of the bigger picture. We forget to ask ourselves "Does this solve my or my users' problem(s)"? Even when we do ask that question we then get caught up over minutia like the elegance of code and performing between two competing tools.

That stuff doesn't matter yet! What matters is that you grasp the concepts the tool promotes and can use it effectively. Beyond that there's usually not much difference in the "elegance" or performance of your code between two tools and it usually comes down to subjective views and how you work. Even if you do choose the "optimal" tools you're most likely fucking up some other part of your codebase anyway. None of us write perfect code. That's why refactoring is a thing.

Are you stuck when it comes time to choose handlebars or mustache? Can't decide between Ember and Backbone? Is Rails or Sinatra better? CodeIgniter or Laravel? Thinking of using Django over... uh... whatever the competitor to Django is? Then you've got your head stuck way too far up your ass and focusing on the wrong thing. I don't mean to offend with that crack - I too have had my head up my developer ass many times before and all it got me was a 'Hello World' page in a project that was stalled before it even started.

So my point is that using the new hotness is fun and challenging and it can do you a lot of good but the moment you stop developing and start chasing the new hotness you've become kind of a tech groupie rather than a developer.

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